JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – SOUTH African executive, Lucky Masilela, has been nominated as an African ICT Champion Award 2017.
The African ICT Alliance (AfICTA) elected him ahead of its fifth summit in Abuja, Nigeria this week.
Masilela is best known role is as Chief Executive Officer of ZA Central Registry (ZACR) where he was able to defend the rights of the delegation of .africa geographic Top Level Domain (gTLD) as a new digital identifier for the continent.
A ZACR delegation earlier this year resulted in the commercial launch of .africa which has to date attracted well over 11 000 successful domain name registrations.
“.africa, in particular, is not just a domain name,” Masilela said.
He said the domain represented the hopes of an entire continent of some 1,2 billion people because of the brighter future it enabled.
“It is more than a communication tool, it is an economic tool which has a true value for countries and the development of local initiatives,” he said.
The .africa domain enjoys the support of the African Union Commission and a majority of African governments.
ZACR has registered more than 1.1 million .za domains and also introduced the city domains of .joburg, .durban and .capetown.
“For his work in bringing these opportunities to Africa, Lucky Masilela is nominated for the AfICTA Africa Champions Award,” AfICTA stated.